Stories by: Tom Henderson and Rand Dvorak

Cyber-Ark's product was sent to us in pre-configured VMware-format virtual machines. While it's Cyber-Ark's policy to install 100 per cent of its products, we requested this optional product delivery mode that allowed us to install the product ourselves.

Quest Privilege Manager for Unix (QPM) currently only works with Unix derivatives. No Windows allowed.

e-DMZ's Password Auto Repository (PAR) is delivered as a hardware appliance with all the services necessary for it to act as a privileged account password manager. All privileged account passwords are issued based on administratively designed rules. The passwords may be deemed valid for an indefinite life, for finite periods of time or for single purpose activities such as installations, upgrades or configuration changes.

Privileged IT staffers literally holds the keys to the castle. Access to those keys that open the doors to critical operating system and application resources must be carefully managed and legally audited. Enter the class of products referred to as privilege account management wares.

In our latest set of test of virtual machine management tools, we examined VM host-centric management, planning and accounting applications from PlateSpin and Virtugo Software, a VMware plug-in for Microsoft's Operations Manager application from nWorks, and a storage-area network management tool from Onaro (which Network Appliance has just acquired) that offers specialized insights into the virtualized world.

Reflex Technologies' Command Center is itself a virtual machine that sits on VMware's ESX server and acts as an intrusion-prevention system, watching connectivity activity between other VMs and the virtual network interface provided by VMware.

PowerRecon is a planning and monitoring application for organizations with a high number of servers and virtual host targets. On the surface, PowerRecon looks similar to traditional network monitoring/management applications that track application inventory, connectivity and network usage.

The nWorks Management Pack for VMware for Microsoft's System Center Operations Manager 2007 is a long name for a tool that provides strong VMware monitoring and management capabilities that are ultimately driven by Microsoft's management platform.

In 2004 we tested several wireless LAN protocol analyzers and found two distinct characteristics: Those dedicated and built from the ground up for WLANs, and those that were modest add-ons to what were then labeled classic protocol analyzer products.